Social media is a great way to help promote a brand because of convenience and connection. Social networks are unlike other marketing platforms because they offer brands an easy access to target audiences, and the ability to maintain online relationships. An online brand profile allows a company to introduce its brand identity, and make the brand more present in consumers’ everyday lives.

The biggest platforms that will help bring the most traffic to a brand are Facebook, Twitter, and Linkedin. Facebook offers a limitless amount of space to promote a brand, with room for wall conversations, updates, photos, video, pictures, interests, and more. Though Twitter and Linkedin are a bit more limiting in what you can share with your audience, they are equally as powerful as Facebook for engaging interaction and forming an online identity.

Consistent updates on Twitter, Facebook, or Linkedin will help flesh out your brand’s profile. Followers can learn about news updates, comment on posts, and offer other insights that may help your brand be the best it can be. The unique quality about social networks is that they build a community and thus a loyalty around your brand, which is valuable for staying relevant and attractive in any industry.

One of the most valuable things social media has to offer a brand is the ability to associate with other brand names online. Partnerships can increase visibility to a wider audience, and leverage a brand into new markets. Alternatively, if a brand targets a specific market or a certain audience, there are niche social media sites to explore. For example, if your brand is a diaper company, it would be advantageous to follow or even start a mommy blog, to get feedback on what mom’s think about your products.

In the past, brands have just been names and logos, but now they trigger online conversations, bringing more life and interaction to a brand’s identity. Not only can you see what consumers say about your brand, but also what they say about competitors. Following a competitor’s profile page can help a brand to monitor the direction of its competitor, and stay up-to-date in the market.

In a brand-centric world, social media can really help a brand distinguish itself and maintain a fresh image. The social media-scape is still new, allowing room to innovate the ways in which it’s being used. We should be seeing some interesting social media initiatives from brands in the near future!

Contributed by: Emily Hassell

Mascots are generally likeable characters. Familiar faces like Tony the Tiger and Ronald McDonald often hold a nostalgically happy place in the memories of most Americans.

But let’s be honest – who ever really liked the Noid?

Domino’s Pizza’s short-lived, floppy-eared mascot is making a present-day comeback after a retirement that’s lasted for 23 years. The popular pizza chain is using the Noid to promote an online game on Facebook, stylized to resemble an arcade game from the 1980s, in which users with the high score can win a free pizza every minute.

Domino’s recently garnered a lot of attention for its brutally honest television commercials that aired nationally during the last year and a half, in which the company promised to reinvent itself as a pizza chain. The ads featured consumers openly complaining about the company’s pizza products, followed by various Domino’s chefs and supervisors who demonstrated how they had improved their pizzas with better ingredients and techniques. The campaign proved successful, as Domino’s experienced a historic quarterly gain in the following year.

It’s strange, then, that Domino’s would revive a long-forgotten mascot at the height of its own revival. The T.V. campaign was successful in re-branding Domino’s from a mediocre fast-food restaurant that makes “pizza that tastes like cardboard,” into an honest, committed company that goes to great lengths to listen to the concerns of its customers.

So why hearken back to a time where there was no glory – when all Domino’s had to distinguish itself as a pizza brand was a cackling little man in a red jumpsuit? After all, the Noid was intended to be an annoying creature that represented other pizza competitors; ironically, it became known as the Domino’s mascot instead.

The online promotion is clearly trying to cash in on a blast-from-the-past moment with the 1980s-themed novelties. However, Domino’s should think critically about how it wants to brand itself from here onwards. The company has made remarkable strides in less than two years’ time in reestablishing itself as a reputable pizza brand, and it needs to continue that momentum instead of interrupting it so abruptly.

One can only hope that, when the promotion is over, the Noid will hop back its way back into the past where it belongs.

Contributed by Allison Meeks

My mother is obsessed with her iPhone. While she taps away on her touchscreen all day, she asks me why I don’t trade in my “clearly less superior” iPod nano (5th generation) for Apple’s newer flagship device. My typical response is that my iPod is my music device and nothing more, and that’s the way I like it, thank you very much.

But then people started using Facebook from their iPhones. Then Angry Birds became popular to play on-the-go. Now, all of my friends have started playing Words with Friends (appropriately).

But me? I’m still here with my iPod. And I’m starting to think my mom has a point.

We are approaching an age of the all-or-nothing device. Phones aren’t appealing to consumers unless they can offer Internet access, Skype capabilities, a slew of apps, e-mail, a GPS, video players, and music, just to name a few features. The basic iPod, which is only a music (and sometimes video) player, simply can’t compete anymore, and so its brand is suffering a slow demise.

The iPhone, on the other hand, is so adept at meeting every technological need that Apple is willing to let the iPod brand be exceedingly eclipsed by the iPhone brand. Why would Apple invest time and money to revive an increasingly irrelevant iPod brand, when it can minimally advertise the lucrative iPhone and garner massive earnings?

By choosing to essentially leave its iPod brand strategy alone, Apple’s sales are starting to reflect iPhone domination. Where iPod sales superseded those of iPhones by $13 million in 2010, that amount shrunk to only a $3 million difference in the first quarter of 2011. If the sales gap diminished that much in just one year, the outlook seems very favorable for iPhones.

The iPod brand’s last saving grace could be its highly established brand image. Like it or not, iPhones will always have their roots from the iPod brand, both in name and in likeness – and many people will always refer collectively to the products as “iPod” devices. Even so, it will be difficult for iPods to hold their own in the coming years against their all-encompassing, digital successors.

Contributed by Allison Meeks

I told myself I wouldn’t get addicted to Angry Birds. But as soon as I demolished those squealing, snorting little pig targets, I knew I was hooked.

I’m not alone in my obsession; there are over 100 million users who play Angry Birds monthly. The game clearly has a loyal following, and has become a staple in American pop culture.

Rovio, the Finnish company who created the game, recently announced plans to take Angry Birds to the Chinese market. The company wants to increase brand awareness with a lofty goal – to become the first global entertainment brand with more than one billion fans.

Instead of creating new games and expanding the master brand’s umbrella, however, Rovio wants to capitalize on Angry Birds alone. Game-themed plush toys, cookbooks, and even merchandise stores are in the works.

“We are betting everything on Angry Birds,” Rovio CEO Peter Vesterbacka said unabashedly at the Casual Connect game show in Seattle.

Rovio is depending on Angry Birds’ unusually expedient success to carry the company far. According to the aforementioned article, Angry Birds is the third most-pirated brand in China after Disney and Hello Kitty — a remarkable feat, given the game is less than two years old. Even more astonishing is that the game has grown faster than any other technological brand in history in terms of active users, according to Rovio’s research data.

These impressive statistics, coupled with Angry Birds’ addictive and quirky brand personality, make for a promising run in China. If the game is already raking in the kind of demand seen for massive, established brands like Disney and Hello Kitty, it’s effectively conveying a brand image of desirability and high regard.

But is Rovio, as a brand, being overshadowed by the Angry Birds brand itself? The company claims it wants a billion fans as an entertainment brand — but people may only become fans of Angry Birds, and not of Rovio, its creator. It will be interesting to see if Rovio’s tactics will help the company’s brand gain prominence on its own as a gaming innovator, or if it will be always be eclipsed by the Angry Birds game.

Regardless, it’s clear that reaching a wider audience of people is vital to Rovio’s strategy.

“It’s not all about monetization now,” Vesterbacka said. “It’s about keeping the fans coming back and building the brand.”

Contributed by Allison Meeks